


and other gerunds

by cereal



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 13:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal/pseuds/cereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But did you have to pick such a windy night for it? And where am I supposed to steal off to when your mother gets to be too much to handle? You know she will. She’ll keep chasing me around with that ring, trying to get me to take it, like I can’t procure something as simple as a ring on my own."</p>
            </blockquote>





	and other gerunds

"I love walking, Rose, I do. It’s my second-favorite gerund after running. Well, and after the sexual ones, kissing and shagging and licking and, oh, there are a lot of that type, aren’t there? Still, it’s definitely in my top 20."

Rose is not going to be swayed by this, wherever this is going — the car is in the shop and they’re more than halfway there, but he keeps talking anyway.

"But did you have to pick such a windy night for it? And where am I supposed to steal off to when your mother gets to be too much to handle? You know she will. She’ll keep chasing me around with that ring, trying to get me to take it, like I can’t procure something as simple as a ring on my own."

She steps neatly out of the way of a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk, not missing a beat.

"It’s sentimental, Doctor. She wants her old ring to go to me, so I can pass it on to my daughter someday."

"Well, then she should just give it over, shouldn’t she? Why insert a middle man into this? Seems entirely unnecessary."

This is a well-worn conversation, one Rose has given up on trying to mediate. If she tells the Doctor to take it, it looks like she’s telling him she wants a proposal.

(Not that she’s opposed to that, on principle, just that she wants him to get there on his own. Well, mostly.)

If she tells her mum to stop pestering him, she’s left to deal with Jackie Tyler theatrics, of the “my only daughter is never getting married” variety.

Instead, she distracts him.

"You know, the car wouldn’t be in the shop if someone hadn’t tried to change the fuel system on their own."

The Doctor stops walking, aghast,  looking every bit like she’d slapped him. Or maligned his hair.

"That fuel system was an insult to this planet and, as it’s the only one I’m living on presently, it’s in my best interest to preserve it."

Admittedly, Rose knows the Land Rover was a gas guzzler. A gas monster — an Abzorbaloff, even. They’d picked it up for a song at an employee auction when Torchwood started its green initiative — a fact that went a long way in indicating how not-green it was. But changing over to something more eco-friendly should’ve been done by a mechanic, not by the Doctor and a malfunctioning sonic screwdriver.

Which is how it had found its way to a garage in the end anyway.

"I think it’s brilliant that you want to save the Earth and everything, Doctor, but maybe leave the car stuff to the car people."

He starts muttering then, words like, “Bessie” and “insult” and “Time Lord,” but she lets it go. Mostly because they’re at their destination, but also because any implication that he — this human Doctor, that is — can’t do something, seems to lead to a frenzy where he concentrates only on mastering that skill for weeks at a time. This is how the entire Tyler family, and house staff, had ended up with hand-crotched afghans.

And bi-level birdhouses.

And macrame key chains.

(But it’s also how she’d ended up with consistent, multiple orgasms — although she may have played him on that one. Just a little bit.)

He’s still mumbling by the time they’ve passed the coat check. And he keeps it up all the way into the party, where her parents are waiting.

It takes her mum 10 minutes to start up with the ring.

It takes the Doctor 10 seconds to pull out his own. 


End file.
